HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

jafo

52 karma · joined March 7, 2021

submissionscomments
jafo··on FTX billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried funneled dark money to Republicans
How are 'dark' donations not afoul of campaign finance laws??

Or is this just another SBF lie?

jafo··on Wisk Aero: Autonomous Urban Air Mobility
Yes
jafo··on Wisk Aero: Autonomous Urban Air Mobility
My grandfather told me shortly after Kitty Hawk, posters appeared in Manhattan claiming "Soon! New York to Paris in 15 hours by air!" with glamorous people walking toward a Concorde-like airplane.

If you are going to believe the BS header video, you might as well believe this BS story.

jafo··on Did JFK Eat the World’s Largest Tamale?
The tamale or Kennedy?
jafo··on Can the American mall survive?
I'd argue it was actually demolished in 1980[1].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIdGxR-aU6o

jafo··on Can the American mall survive?
The mall near where I grew up suffered from that problem 50 years ago, and was shut down by the late 1970s...
jafo··on Europe's Newest Nuclear Reactor Eases Finland's Power Problems
I like the "wartime like economy" analogy.

It took 6 years to defeat the bad guys during the second world war.

Most of the guys that defeated them had little to no military training at the onset of the conflict.

The NIMBYs in that scenario were marketed to with either assured oppression, or war with a "better" future. Same can be done today.

jafo··on Auto Traffic Control – A gRPC Programming Air Traffic Control Game
Or Kennedy Approach on the C64: "United three two six, say heading and altitude" "This is United three two six on one eight zero at four thousand feet"...even though I knew damn well what his heading an altitude was.
jafo··on Why I built a dictionary app
> Looking up words is not stupid.

That's for the ML algorithms to decide.

jafo··on I’m nearly 60. Here’s what I’ve learned about growing old so far
This sounds a lot like "an old guy's excuse".

If you are 60 years old, you learned how to monitor your spending in the late 1960s.

Same skill here.

jafo··on WTF Happened in 1971?
You might be on to something here...."Who needs TV when I have T-Rex?"
jafo··on Tell HN: I probably spend more on piracy than if I just paid for content
Long ago, computing was about freedom.

"I can organize a music collection the way I want...AND take it with me wherever I go?"

Somewhere along the line "convenience" displaced "freedom".

"Why manage my own collection when I have Spotify or Apple Music?"

I suspect the pendulum will swing back at some point.

jafo··on FAA changes course on eVTOL certification
You are a NCIMBY?

No crashing in my backyard?

jafo··on How to professionally say
> Are we so fu*d up?

"Is the alternative way to express these sentiments?"

jafo··on Neil Young tells Spotify it can’t have both him and Joe Rogan anymore
Well I heard Mister Young bitch about him

Well I heard ol' Neil put him down

Well I hope Neil Young will remember

Spotify don't need him around anyhow

jafo··on Elizabeth Holmes found guilty
Holy cow...Bre-X that takes me back. People were actually suicided in that one.
jafo··on Today’s Disneyland is a price gouge, not a magical experience
In the spring of 2001, I planned a trip to Disneyworld for that fall, specifically the third week of September.

Park was open, but empty. Quite the surreal experience.

jafo··on Ask HN: Why would a city on Mars avoid Armageddon?
Addressed in Ray Bradbury's novel The Martian Chronicles (1950).

In Bradbury's story, the vast majority of residents of the Martian colonies returned back to Earth when (atomic) war was imminent, leaving Mars all but deserted, and the Earth destroyed.

I found this hard to believe, but this set up a really cool ending.

jafo··on Adele gets Spotify to take shuffle button off all album pages
Because we tolerate it.

It doesn't seem so long ago we didn't have much of an ability to pick what music we listened to. This will seem alien to younger HNers, but it is true. You listened to what was played. Sure, there were records and 8 tracks et al, but portability was limited. Not being able to choose what we listened, when you listened to it, or how you listened to it to peaked with disco - the backlash hit simply because you could not escape it...it was EVERYWHERE....radio, tv, movies, commercials...it died of overexposure.

Then for a hot minute - about 35ish years - we had complete freedom to choose how and what we listen to. Starting at about 1980 with the Sony Walkman + cassette, you could organize music to be portable the way you wanted, at a price of time and effort. This price dropped to almost nothing by the mid 2010s with mp3s and mp3 players. Complete musical freedom!

The problem? Even "almost nothing" wasn't good enough, we demanded it to be "nothing". So here come the streaming services to rescue us from the burden of work required to maintain our freedom....

jafo··on Ask HN: What was it like to use BBS?
<p>age sysop

...original online chat

jafo··on Report on Stablecoins [pdf]
Would it enable any new use cases?
jafo··on Report on Stablecoins [pdf]
> They money you put in there is used to acquire assets that are used to produce goods that people will pay to consume

Is a decentralized, public ledger not a good people will pay (via cryptocurrency) to consume?

jafo··on Can Boom Supersonic Succeed Where the Concorde Failed?
> but there’s a good chance that engineers could lower the boom from 105 decibels to just 70 decibels. At that volume, US lawmakers might revisit the speed limit if it means getting from California to Washington DC in half the time.

"good chance"..."might revisit"

Talk about a wing and a prayer...

jafo··on Gen. Milley took top-secret action to protect nuclear weapons from Trump
> and no precedents were set in this situation.

Time will tell.

jafo··on Gen. Milley took top-secret action to protect nuclear weapons from Trump
Whatever the details are, I am interested if it set a precedent or not.
jafo··on Simulator of digging a tunnel through the earth
Guess we will just fantasize about it in song then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ueivjr3f8xg

The future is bright: wheels in space, underwater trains, and everyone gets a spandex jacket.

jafo··on Simulator of digging a tunnel through the earth
Undersea by rail. Ninety minutes from New York to Paris: 5600 km
jafo··on Tesla launches its Full Self-Driving subscription package for $199 per month
Driving cuts into other more profitable activities, like shopping, watching The Office, gaming, and defending your social media turf.

Can you image how much money Amazon Retail loses every year due to people wasting time driving when they could be on Amazon.com ??

jafo··on You Are Doing Too Much: Focus on One Thing
...and that one thing should be ignoring everyone around you.
jafo··on Ask HN: 90s programmers, what did you expect the future of tech to look like?
I'd be on Borland C version 35.0
Page 1 of 2Next →